The present invention relates to a waveguide type optical switch that is employed in the field of optical communication, and more particularly to a waveguide type optical switch which is small in size and suitable for remote control.
Among conventional waveguide type optical switches is a 1.times.2 optical switch disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 6-148536. This 1.times.2 optical switch has a cantilever beam formed on a silicon substrate, and serves to perform optical path switching by moving an optical waveguide formed on the cantilever beam with the use of electrostatic force.
In the aforementioned optical switch the following points have not been taken into consideration.
First, the use of electrostatic force requires the drive volt is as high as tens of volts or more, and a single-cantilever beam structure for the optical switch involves turning of a tip end of the waveguide concurrently with translating motion at the time of optical switching operation, which causes non-parallelism of the optical entrance plane and optical exit plane of the waveguide, leading to an increased loss of insertion. In addition, a substrate is formed of silicon, and so if silica glass is used as a material for the optical waveguide, the waveguide will be distorted or cracked due to a difference between the linear expansion coefficients of the both components.